1896 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
635 
PEKIN DUCKS IN KANSAS. 
THEIR FEED AND CARE 
1. Wliat feed and care shall I give Pekin ducks, 
so as to get early winter eggs ? 2. Is dried blood 
as good as green boue ? How much do you feed ? 
3. Will the young ones lay first, or as soon as the 
old ones ? To what age will it pay to keep a duck 
for eggs? 4. What should be the general care 
and management of ducks for market? 
Kansas. F. o. c. 
ANSWERED BY H. E. MOSS. 
1. In order to start Pekins laying, say, 
January 1, which is as early as neces¬ 
sary, begin three weeks previous, to 
feed them the following mash in these 
proportions : three measures of boiled 
potatoes, beets or turnips, mashed ; 
three each of corn meal and bran, one 
each of dried blood, poultry bone, pul¬ 
verized charcoal and sharp sand. To 
this, add cut green food which may con¬ 
sist of cabbage, steamed clover or any 
available green stuff; use half as much 
green stuff as the above mixture would 
make, so that when complete, one-third 
of the mash will be greens. Ducks need 
fodder of some kind every day in the 
year, and to insure vigor and fertility, 
it is very essential during the laying 
season. 
2. I consider dried blood superior to 
beef scrap which is fed by the eastern 
duck raisers almost exclusively. I have 
never used green bone for ducks. My 
reasons are, first, that the albumen of 
the egg is largely composed of nitrogen, 
and the yolk partly. Blood is very rich 
in this element, and in a much more 
concentrated form than in scrap. It 
contains no waste tissue or any matter 
that is liable to sour, as the scrap would 
do under certain conditions. Second, 
being more concentrated, it is more 
economical. Third, being as fine as 
meal, it is more easily mixed and fed, 
requiring no soaking or chopping. In 
feeding bone meal, be particular to use 
the best quality of poultry bone. I 
have seen one of our large packing 
houses here who make a special feature 
of blood and bone for poultry, select 
very carefully for this purpose, the very 
best sound bone which is rich in hypo- 
phosphites and lime. In buying bone 
meal, be careful not to get such as is 
made from gathered bones—sound, dis¬ 
eased and decayed, and fit only for fer¬ 
tilizing purposes. This would be fatal 
to ducks. Use the bone in the above 
formula only three days in a week, and 
the blood every day. Sand may be fed 
in the mash or placed where they can 
help themselves. Once or twice a week 
is sufficient for the charcoal. As soon 
as laying begins, increase the corn meal 
and decrease the bran, taking care that 
they do not get too fat. Feed the above 
morning and night. 
3. The young hatched in April and 
May and properly cared for, will begin 
laying in three weeks after you begin 
feeding the above, as will also the old 
ones. Egg production is wholly a ques¬ 
tion of feed. They lay about 100 to 110 
eggs each, on an average, the first year, 
and do better the second and third ; but 
after that, should be discarded. 
4. Questions and conditions will arise 
in which one must use his best judgment, 
and act quickly. An ailing duck may 
be a dead duck in an hour ; act quickly, 
or his companions may speedily follow 
him. I have had excellent results in 
feeding as follows : No food whatever 
for the first 24 hours ; then, every two 
hours for the first four days, this mix¬ 
ture : One measure of hard-boiled egg, 
chopped fine, and one of stale bread or 
fine bran, one-fourth measure of dried 
blood, one-eighth of poultry bone, and 
a little charcoal and sand. Wet the bread 
with sweet milk. 
When from four to eight days old, feed 
every three hours the following mixture: 
Four measures of cut green stuff, three 
each of boiled vegetables, fine bran, and 
corn meal, one each of dried blood and 
bone, with charcoal and sand. From 
the ninth day, until six weeks old, feed 
four times a day the same, but gradu¬ 
ally decrease the bran and increase the 
corn meal a little, so that, at the end of 
six weeks, you will be using only one 
measure of bran and four of corn meal. 
A week before marketing, cut down on 
the green food, and add a little more 
blood. It will make the flesh firmer and 
add to its appearance when dressed. 
After the first week, feed charcoal and 
bone on alternate days. All feed must 
be wet, or what is called, dry wet ; if 
too dry, it will clog in the roof of the 
mouth, while if too wet or sloppy, it will 
stick to the down, especially about the 
head and eyes, and stop up the nostrils. 
When nine weeks old, they should 
weigh 4% to 5 pounds each, and should 
be marketed. Keep ducklings out of the 
water. They are best kept in the 
brooder house yards, and always when 
possible, feed them in the yards. If fed 
in the pens, they distribute the water 
you give them all over the pen, which 
necessitates a change of litter almost 
daily, as ducks must have a dry floor on 
which to roost, or they will contract 
rheumatism and die. Give plenty of 
water at feeding time, but market ducks 
should not have water at all times be¬ 
tween meals, as they will drink too much. 
Cut weeds and grass for them to peck at 
between meals. Ducklings, until two 
weeks old, should not be given cold 
water ; warm it to about 80 degrees F. 
After that, cold water will not injure 
them. House them during a rain storm, 
as carefully as you would young turkeys. 
If they get wet before they are feathered, 
they sicken and die. 
Hardly any two pens of ducklings can 
be fed alike. Where one is unfortunate 
enough to have to worry through a sea¬ 
son or more of brain-racking experi¬ 
menting with a lot of incubators that 
were made to sell but never to hatch ex¬ 
cept by accident, he will have a lot of 
weak, sickly things with constitutions 
ruined by variable heat during incuba¬ 
tion, and in which the best of care and 
feed will not avert a great mortality. 
Kansas City. 
FORKFULS OF FACTS. 
A Good Record. —We showed three 
Jersey cattle at the New York State 
Fair this week, and took first, second 
and third prizes. Our Duroc Jersey 
swine took 20 prizes—10 first, 0 second, 
and 4 third. Our Mammoth White win¬ 
ter rye took first, edward l clarkson. 
Don’t Need Ensilage —“I don’t need 
any silo,” said Mr. Garret D. Voorhes 
of Sullivan County, N. Y., than whom 
there is no neater or more careful farmer 
anywhere. “ My corn is all cured and 
stacked outdoors. If it gets a little too 
dry, a little water is sprinkled on as the 
courses are being laid on. Then with a 
little salt sprinkled over each half load, 
as the stack increases, we have corn 
stalks and corn fodder that the cows eat 
clean, excepting three or four inches of 
the heavy butts that become dry and 
weatherbeaten.” Mr. Voorhes says that 
he plants his fodder corn far enough 
apart so that it ears nicely, and it 
always keeps green and sweet in the 
stack ; even when put in unusually dry, 
with the water and salt, it becomes 
green and succulent in the stack. 
Tuberculin and Cattle. —In regard 
to the possibility of tuberculin having a 
deleterious effect upon cattle, I would 
say that the opinions of investigators 
upon this point are somewhat at vari¬ 
ance with each other. Personally, in 
my own experience, where we have in¬ 
oculated cattle with tuberculin repeat¬ 
edly, I have seen no ill effects from its 
continued use. I believe that this opin¬ 
ion is also held by Dr. Salmon, of Wash¬ 
ington, as a result of very much more 
extensive investigations on this same 
subject. Prof. Nocard, of France, be¬ 
lieves, however, that, in the more gen¬ 
eralized cases of tuberculosis, there is a 
possibility of a harmful effect being pro¬ 
duced by the continued use of tubercu¬ 
lin. As I understand his views, this 
danger is not so great in cases where 
the disease has not thoroughly fastened 
its hold on the animal. From the above, 
I would say that, in the case mentioned 
on page 608, there is very little proba¬ 
bility of the disease being redistributed 
where only a light infection is found, as 
in the instance given. h. l. russell. 
Wisconsin Experiment Station. 
Fighting Flies. —From all over the 
country, come reports of the damage 
done to stock by flies and mosquitoes. 
These pests are unusually abundant this 
year. The Indiana Farmer thus describes 
a fly trap invented by a Kentucky man : 
In a convenient place in his pasture near the 
watering' place, he erected a small tower inclosed 
in the wire gauze usually used for window and 
door screens. An ordinary chute leads to the 
tower, and beyond it is a dark room, in which 
large brushes are arranged to sweep all flies 
from the animals as they pass through it. On 
beingswept from the animal, the flies make a bee¬ 
line for the daylight of the tower, and are thus 
entrapped and gradually beat themselves to 
death against the wire screen of the dome, while 
the animal walks out the other way. The door 
admitting the animal to the base of the tower 
opens inward and immediately springs shut 
when the animal passes it. It is a screen door, 
protected by an outside lining of stiff wire net¬ 
ting, and the cattle readily push it open. The in¬ 
ventor claims that, after being driven through a 
few times, the cattle learn to run to this trap and 
go through by themselves when tormented by 
Hies, as readily as they learn to run to a thicket 
of brush to scrape off the flies, or as readily as 
horses learn to run to a barn to escape flies. 
Wiiat Heredity Represents.— 
Hoard’s Dairyman makes the following 
forcible illustration of the importance 
of good breeding: 
“ Investigations made by the officials at Boon, 
Germany, regarding the descendants of a notori¬ 
ous drunkard, vagabond and thief, Ada Jurke, 
have yielded some startling results. This woman 
was born in 1740 and died at an early age. Her 
descendants numbered 834, of whom 709 have been 
accounted for. The results of the inquiry are 
thus shown: 106 illegitimate, 142 beggars, 64 in¬ 
mates of poorhouses, 181 of the demimonde and 
76 criminals, among whom were seven murderers. 
The family has cost the State in the past 75 years, 
in various ways, no less than 5,000,000 marks.”— 
Exchange. 
The above is a very convincing argument and 
illustration to bring before those dairy farmers 
who do not believe in the power of heredity. 
There are thousands of such farmers in these 
United States. Hide past their farms and see the 
scrub bull, like John Randolph’s mule, “ without 
pride of ancestry,” and certainly without any 
hope of decent posterity. Note well the quality 
of cows they have bred and raised, and you can 
see that they have no intelligent abiding faith in 
the virtue of good blood. So they deal in scrub 
blood all the while. Heredity is a tremendous 
power in men. It is equally a power with farm 
animals, and no man is fit to be a dairy farmer, 
in the true sense of the word, until he has made 
some study and practice in the principles of 
breeding a good animal. Bad heredity taxes the 
community to support paupers and criminals. 
Bad heredity in cows taxes the farmer to support 
the result of his own folly in the shape of a poor 
cow. 
SHETLAND PONIES. 
Imported and Home Bred. 
FULL. BLOOD AND CROSS. 
Great variety as to color and size. 
Single, Double, Tandem, Four-in-hand 
and Saddle Ponies. 
Also, GRADE PERCHERON and 
FRENCH COACH HORSES. 
Prices reasonable. Inspection solic¬ 
ited. Catalogue mailed on application. 
DUANE H, NASH , 
Millington, Morris County, N. J. 
THREE YOUNG JERSEY BULLS 
from darns that made IS lbs. 8 o/.s , 17 lbs. 12 
ozs., 24 lbs. 3 ozs. honest printed butter in 7 days 
R P. SHANNON, PITTSBURGH, PA. 
GUERNSEYS. 
Fifty head choice Cows, Heifers 
and Bulls for Sale. 
ELLERSLIE STOCK FARM, 
KHINECLIFF, N. Y. 
WANTTn 20 Jerseys or Guernseys; must be 
TV Nil I L U new milkers or due tilts fall, subject 
to the Tuberculin test, and cheau for cash. Address 
AVEIllLL & GREGORY, Syracuse. N. Y. 
AT HOM E for two weeks. 
Willswood Herds 
Recorded Berkshire Swine, 
Registered Guernsey Cattle, 
Recorded South-Down Sheep 
WILLSWOOD FARM. Budd’s Lake. N. J. 
Address WILLS A. SEWARD, 20.’ Broadway, N.Y.Clty 
WOODLAND FARM Sr , SW sl ’“ 1 ’ ° [ 
J. E. WING, Manager, Mechanicsburg, Ohio. 
CHENANGO VALLEY 
burgh, Jr., Proprietor. Dorset norn, Shropshire and 
Rambouillet Sheep, Dutch Belted and Jersey cattle; 
also Poland-China, Jersey Red and Suffolk Pigs. 
ULU ilUUOf lUUITU nuuo* age, supplied 
from our herd of Poland Chinas. To reduce stock 
betore enlarging our swine parlors. High prices, low 
prices; any kind of prices accepted. Write 
F. H. UAl'tiS &. sons, CbiUenaugo, N Y. 
CHESHIRES 
all ages. Pigs In pairs not akin, 
tilled free. W. E. Mandkvillk 
Every tenth order 
, Brookton, N. Y 
400 
SELECTED PEKIN DUCKS; extra stock 
Brookside Poultry Farm, Columbus, N. J. 
are actually worked on Rabbits and 
Rats. Sold cheap. Book 10 cents. Send for free 
circular. S. & L. FARNSWORTH, New London O 
l consider Jayne's Expectorant the best though 
Medicine 1 know of. In cases of Croup, IT HAS 
SAVED BOTH MY OWN AND CHILDREN’S LIVES. 
—N. N. CAZEN, Sparrow Bush. N. Y., Oct. 29. 1895. 
For Headache, take Jayne's Painless Sanative 
Pills — Adv. 
TUTTLE’S ELIXIR 
Used and Endorsed 
by Adams Ex. Co. 
Is a Sure Cure for 
Colic. Horse AH, Con¬ 
tracted or Knotted i 
Cords, Curbs. Splints. 
Shoe Boils, Callous 
of all kinds, etc., etc. 
EXCELS ALL OTHERS 
And Is warranted to give satisfaction. Locates 
lameness, when applied, by remaining moist on 
, part affected. What others say : 
Dear Sir: I want to add my testimonial to 
your list recommending Tuttle’s Elixir for curbs, 
i broken tendons, thrush, and nails In the feet. I 
have used it on all of these cases many times, 
1 and never failed to make a cure. 
J. H. Nay, Keadville (Mass.) Trotting Park. 
Tuttle’s Family Elixir cures Rheumatism, 
i Sprains, Bruises, Pains, etc. Sample bottle of 
, either Elixir free for three 2-cent stamps to pay 
postage. Fifty cents buys either Elixir of any 
I druggist, or it will be sent on receipt of price. 
I)It. 8. A. TUTTLE, Sole Proprietor, 
27 K Beverly Street, BOSTON, MASS. 
A HORSE FOR $3. 
Mr. James Mott, of Willmer, Minn., one of the 
most prominent liverymen and horsemen in the 
Northwest, says: 'Thad one of my best driving 
mares get stiffened in the shoulders so badly, 
that she was worthless, but I bought a package 
of Dr. McKee’s Magic Si-avin Cure for 83, and ap¬ 
plied it to her shoulders, and it has completely 
cured her, so that she is just as good as ever. It 
is a wonderful medicine, and any one having a 
lame horse should use it. Sold by 
O. \V. MolvEE, V. S., Benson, Minn. 
Vegetable Cutter Co., 
MILFORD. MASS , 
Sue. to The E. ,7. Roche Co, 
Warranted the only Manu¬ 
facturers of automatic 
feeding.easy running, dut- 
a . ble Green Bone Cutteis. 
5 V «> sizes for hand & power: 
• • No. 10. $6 75; No 9, $7 90; 
X a No. 8. $9.60; No. 3 $16: No.4, 
•“ ' $18; No 2 for power, $25. 
Sent on trial Send for cat. 
DRIVING 
Still King. 
THE BIT OF BITS7 
Will control the most 
vicious horse. 
Sales greater than ever. 
Sample mailed XC for fln 
Nickel, $1.50. $liUU 
_ Stallion Bits 50 cts. extra. 
RACINE MALLEABLE IRON CO., RA V ? I ' S " E - 
•WWWWWWWWVrlVVvVWP 
Galled Horses 
, Breasts, Backs, Mouths, etc., stained,, 
healed, toughened and CURED WHILE AT WORK. 
It’s the best. You will swear to this fact if you ' 
■ will try CALL POWDER. GO centebymail. 
MOORE BROS. ALBANY N. Y. <*. 
BUCKLEY’S IMPROVED BASIN. 
We make Watering Basins for Horses and 
Cattle, with styles adapted to every kind of fasten 
ing, at prices from 75 cents to $1.50. 
write for catalogue. 
C. E. BUCKLEY & CO., Dover Plains, N.Y. 
